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With the launch of the new book, Chris has been busy delivering the Three E message to a media slowly awakening to the severity of our predicament. Recent world developments (spiking silver/gold/oil/food prices, a plummeting US dollar, renewed PIIGS debt concerns, MENA unrest, and Japan's woes, to name just a few) are sobering signals that we are far into the timeline that the Crash Course has predicted.

I thought I'd compile some of Chris' more recent and notable media appearances for those who may not have seen them yet.

BNN

This morning, BNN - Canada's Business News Network - aired this interview with Chris discussing the implications of the coming energy crunch (click image to launch the video):

Yahoo! Finance's The Daily Ticker

Here are two clips of Chris' recent appearance on The Daily Ticker on April 5. Host Aaron Task digs into Chris' thoughts on the impact of recent events in Japan, the Middle East, and Africa:

Kaiser Report

Earlier his week, Max Keiser has an energetic discussion with Chris on the recent Fed actions and the extreme pressure being placed on the US dollar (Chris' segment starts at 13m:25s):

David Pakman Show

On April 14th, Chris sits down with David for a wide-ranging talk covering Wall Street corruption, the national budget, Japan, peak oil and the outlook for the economy:

Northshire Bookstore Event

On Friday, April 22, Chris gave an updated presentation of the Crash Course at a book signing at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, VT (Chris's part starts at 3m:20s):

Financial Sense Newshour

Here's an interview Chris had with Jim Puplava back in February on preparing for Peak Oil. A head's up: Chris will be Jim's featured guest next week for a segment dedicated to the new book and Chris' outlook on where things go from here:

In addition to these, there have been a number of radio and live appearances. We're doing our best to get the message out while there's still time left for prudent preparation. And if you have any media contacts to send our way - please do so! Just email marketing@PeakProsperity.com.

I forget what a treat it is to hear Chris speak. He is so at ease discussing and simplifying the complex concepts and data relevant to the 3E's, that it makes it a real pleasure to listen to him discuss these with others.

Adam, you may already be doing it (I need to check), but if not, is there a chance that the site would post Chris's upcoming book-signing .engagements ahead of time? I bet you'd find a lot of people at the site who would be eager to have an opportunity to meet Chris in person.

Just three days ago (4/27/2011) on BNN they had the CEO of JBI on the Pitch show looking for 5 million dollars to rollout their Plastic2Oil technology. The process converts waste plastic going to landfills (30 million tons available yearly) into #2 fuel oil (Diesel) ready for the market. A step in the right direction for all of us.

Interesting videos but I am going to have to disagree with Chris when he says that we should be aggressively building new pipelines to supply the energy needed to power our economic engine, if the purpose of that is to maintain economic growth until alternative energy systems come into the picture in a significant way.

The fact is, our monetary system is flawed and broken; it was so from the very first day it was brought into existence. NOTHING can continue to grow indefinitely within a confined domain. Yet this is what economics is suggesting is possible. There has never been a single observed instance in the history of the entire known universe of biological growth continuing indefinitely. It ALWAYS ends, and population ecology clearly shows that the way biological growth typically ends is through catastrophic collapses. And no, technology is not going to be able to somehow insulate us from that crash. To the contrary, what technology has done is instead enabled us to greatly overextend our economies and societies way beyond the edge of the precipice, well beyond the carrying capacity of the planet; and this has been masked over the last 40 years by market manipulation by the Fed and through all the phoney paper promises out there (apparent wealth that amounts to nothing of real value), which is really nothing more than a giant global ponzi scheme. Just as with any unsustainable biological growth, ALL ponzi schemes crash.

I am amazed at how so many out there will dance around the ultimate and undeniable truth that cannot be argued away -- that economic growth WILL stop and it MUST stop. There is nothing in this universe that can prevent this. To deny this is to violate the second law of thermodynamics and to believe in the existence of perpetual motion machines.

Do we have an acceptance and admission of this fact by our leaders? It doesn't seem like it. Instead, what do we have? What we have is 99.9% of mainstream economists out there arguing about how we should best go about restarting economic growth -- essentially, thinking about the best way of extending ourselves even further beyond the cliff. Well, here's an idea --- what if economic growth (on a global scale) is finished, and it CAN'T be restarted?

Is this not the most absurd thing that has happened in the history of humankind? When we as a species are ramming full speed ahead towards a brick wall, and at the same time 99.9% of our economic leaders are trying to figure out how to SPEED UP that train?!?! How can so many people be so completely clueless as to what's going on? I presume this is because economists don't have a clue about how energy and ecosystems work. One of the first things they learn in school, and then base their entire discipline of study on, is the idea that labour has "productivity". HOGWASH!!! Labour produces ABSOLUTELY NOTHING! When the most basic building block of an entire discipline of study is COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY FALSE, is it any wonder that EVERYTHING in economics derived from this is also a farce?

If as Chris says it is going to take 40 years to bring alternative technologies to market in order to take up the slack from fossil fuels (I have a feeling it may come quite a bit sooner than this, because all these technologies exist, but have been suppressed from the market for a few decades), is it reasonable to assume that we will have even 40 years' worth of DIFFICULT oil left available? I highly doubt it, the EROEI is continually dropping. So why should we be trying to continue to boost 3% economic growth for the next 40 years when that clearly isnt going to happen (a constant 3% growth rate for 40 years is NOT constant growth, but rather turns into NINE percent annual growth at the end of 40 years in terms of the original energy consumption at the beginning).

In short, there is NOTHING that can be done to prevent a crash. All those environmentalists from the 70's right up until now who were warning that if we didn't change our ways and get off oil and start taking better care of the environment, that this amounted to stealing from future generations ...... and those people were generally dismissed as being kooks ...... well .... here's the news ..... WE are that future generation!

We are literally seeing the effects of this right now. Those who believe that the economy is somehow in opposition with the environment, and that one must go down for the other to go up, are sorely mistaken. Rather, our economies are COMPLETELY depend on the environment. That is why those dire consequences that scientists and envornmentalists have been warning about for the last 50 years are now manifesting themselves as economic problems (isn't a shortage of resources manifesting itself as significantly rising prices the same thing as saying we have environmental problems because the resources simpy do not exist anymore to support us?) The damage is done and nothing can be done to stop it. A correction is needed and it will soon arrive. We should take this as an opportunity to rip the bandage off all at once and get off fossil fuels for good. The technologies available for the average person to get off oil are all out there (I have many of them and they are no more expensive than conventional technologies). I see no point in destroying the planet to rip every drop of fossil fuel out of the ground (and then REALLY screw future generations who may actually have a legitimate use for that fossil fuel that doesn't involve burning it in an ICE when there are much better alternatives available), in order to satisfy a fundamentally flawed monetary system that purports (but fails) to violate the laws of thermodynamics.

So when Chris says that we need a huge effort by government to ram through new pipelines and increase fossil fuel extraction, because the private sector isn't going to be able to respond fast enough (it is the market manipulation by the Fed and energy industry in collusion which has masked this problem), I am going to have to completely disagree with him. This is because I disagree that we do not have the technologies available to get off oil. We have them all. I have had electric remote control cars since I was 5 years old, 30 years ago, and ever since then I have wondered why they can't make remote control cars that are big enough for real people. The answer? Because then us big people wouldn't buy gasoline anymore.

It is VERY easy to retrofit any hybrid car and turn it into a plugin hybrid that does not use any gasoline for XX kilometers, after which the gasoline engine turns on. This would result in gasoline consumption easily dropping by something like 95% for the average person driving such a car.

How can anyone still believe that it is NOT market manipulation which is keeping these vehicles out of the public's hand? Do you honestly believe that it is only now, in 2011, that technology has finally gotten to the point where the Chevy Volt could come to market? Come on..... we could have done this 40 years ago if we had wanted to (more to the point, if our LEADERS had wanted to, those same leaders that have their fingers in the oil industry chips 'n dip).

I can open up the back of my Prius and see a huge wasted empty space that could be filled with batteries! Even 10 miles worth of range would make a huge difference, because most trips are short! It is absolutely absurd to believe that the reaosn Toyota is not doing this is because somehow the technology or economics will not support it. It would increase the price of a Prius by MAYBE $5000 at most, and that's probably a large overestimate. If you truly believe it's limitations on technology that have prevented Toyota from figuring out how to put a wall plug on its Prius for the last FOURTEEN YEARS, I have a waterfront condo in Florida you might be interested in buying.... (and Toyota, I'll donate a toaster oven that you can reverse engineer if you need some inspiration on how to figure out how connect wall plugs to appliances.....)

It may be counter argued that we simply do not have the manufacturing capability to ramp up production of hybrids and EV's fast enough to do this. I say HOGWASH!! What happened to the US automotive industry during the second world war? It was COMPLETELY commandeered and dedicated to making war machinery, it was one of the most awesome displays of what a country CAN manufacture, if it so desires and focuses all its attention on it. There is no reason why this could not be done now (at least on a technological level, but politically it's very different because the oil industry is largely in charge of the show).

And conversely, how much effort is going to be required to suck every last drop of fossil fuels out of the ground, as the alternative strategy for the next 40 years that Chris is suggesting? I'd guess it's probably on the same scale of "difficulty" as cranking out millions of EV's. So which of these options should we choose -- should we devote our valuable resources towards a massive government sponsored push to pull every last drop of fossil fuel out of the ground (with tremendous collateral damage to the environment and to other parts of the economy that directly depend on a healthy environment), or should we instead use our valuable remaining resources to support a massive government-sponsored push to crank out 100 million Chevy Volts, each one of which has bodywork covered with solar panels that enable it to drive 10 km a day for free, and along with this 1000 Watts of solar panels for each household in the US?

Sorry if I was a little snarky above. Anyways, here is the patent that Chevron has been using to keep electric cars off the road for the last 10 years. They sued Toyota in 2003 and forced them to stop making Rav4-EV's, and this is also why Toyota will not put a wall plug on their Prius. All the new EV's coming to market now use different batteries, lithium ion, which had some safety concerns that needed to be sorted out. Thankfully, no oil company controls the patent on them.

Here is a "mistake" that Energy Conversion Devices made in their 2005 annual report, where they basically spelled it all out (ECD got bought out by Chevron, or something to that effect, and that's how the patent suppression works). The patents expire in 2014. Read pages 11 to 14.

I've read you three times, watching all of the interviews above about twice. From this, my conclusion is simply that you and Chris are completely on the same wave length in much of your intent, with only a minor confusion in how you've interpreted what he had to say in his interviews.

There is absolutely no doubt that the US could have brought transport electrification to the masses 40 years ago. However, in present terms that would require an extra 750 nuclear power stations (for example), on top of the 100 or so already in use to create the electricity that would replace liquid fossil fuel that we're now in global and Stateside shortfall.

In terms of ramping alternative and renewable resource to the US energy mix, it would take a rise of 2000 times production of wind, solar etc, to catch up with what is presently being burned up as fossil fuel.

To implement those advances and diversity would require using a vast amount of energy to replace what we already use that is unsustainable, which is where an estimate of 40 years was used as an example to transition, as a painfully obvious impossibility, with 6.7% IEA global decline rates, factoring that the world could well have to use half of the roughly 84 million barrels of alocated present daily oil use for hospitals and education, heating, transport and food, to create but 20% of our sustainable energy replacement over the next ten years, even if there were political will, which there is not ...

Time ~ Scale ~ Cost.

These three words have been the grounding in Crash Course 17, the Crash Course itself, and the foundation to this forum for almost 3 years now. We have neither the energy to create a world on a scale it is today in the future, and we have neither had a political will that should have been implemented twenty-six years ago. Why twenty-six years? It is in reference to The Hirsch Report, written and published six years ago, that stated it would take twenty years before peak oil to begin implementing a transition from fossil fuel use. Since we're already six years past peak oil, I think we can safely say the global economy as it stands, and about half the human carrying capacity of the planet are well overdue a cull in the "next twenty-six years", possibly along with most of the other half of the human race, along with 90% of all species, if we continue to go to war and fight over the remaining depleting oil resource.

Electric cars "Were" a global possibility in transition thirty or forty years ago. These are now the least of my concern over being warm and fed ...

Thanks for posting these Adam. It is so refreshing to listen to someone speak so eloquently on all of these very complex topics and make so much sense. Chris is a truly great leader.

Okay, let's take an honest, reliable voice in the wilderness and turn him into a........ POLITICIAN. I suppose next you'll be thinking about using the Mona Lisa to line your bird cage.

Earthwise,

Have you been polishing a gleam on your claws with an angle-grinder again ... ... ??? There is nothing in this world more pleasurable to the ears than the blood-curdling scream of a slash and run first poster in retort!!!

VF, Chris's interview on the David Packman show are among the best I've ever seen (my opinion)! Thanks for bringing them to our attention, and thanks Adam for incorporating here! I'll be forwarding links for those on to family members.

Can anyone post "Tape" stats for the past 3 months? I still find it hard to believe that this is a normal stock market with mom/pop's investing for the long term. Why is this data not available? Why is it hidden? I guess the Casino doesn't want you to know the house odds either. Totally corrupt.

There is absolutely no doubt that the US could have brought transport electrification to the masses 40 years ago. However, in present terms that would require an extra 750 nuclear power stations (for example), on top of the 100 or so already in use to create the electricity that would replace liquid fossil fuel that we're now in global and Stateside shortfall.

In terms of ramping alternative and renewable resource to the US energy mix, it would take a rise of 2000 times production of wind, solar etc, to catch up with what is presently being burned up as fossil fuel.

I'm going to have to disagree with you Vanityfox. We could make a complete transition to EV`s right now (assuming we could crank them out that fast) and not need a single new nuke plant, and we would need little new electrical generation capacity, we would REDUCE GHG emissions, and not only that but get this, we would extract LESS fossil fuels out of the ground than what we do now! And each automobile owner would save about $2000 a year in operating costs!

Huh? Am I insane? How is that possible? For two reasons:

One: This is possible because of the incredible amounts of natural gas that are currently totally wasted in the oil extraction and refining process.Think ``Rube Goldberg Machine``

Reason number two: the electrical demand for charging electric cars would be almost entirely at night (you`d charge your EV while in bed like you do your cell phone). Since demand for electricity is otherwise low at this time, the gross demand placed on the electrical infrstructure would probably bring it up to equivalent demand as in the daytime. So although overall we would need more electricity, most of this would be satisfied by keeping the power plants going at night rather than slowing them down. And where is the energy going to come from to power the extra night time electricity generation? From the natural gas and other fuels we would no longer need in order to refine tar sand into gasoline anymore, for that gallon of gasoline you would no longer be buying because you have an EV!

Don`t believe me? You can do the math yourself. It`s actually really simple. Go to page 86 of this report, and you will see that if you make an estimate for an average for both extraction plus upgrading, that it takes about 1 or 2 gigajoules of natural gas to produce a barrel of bitumen. These numbers are from the oil sands themselves, and they are typical of what I have been able to find. Add in the other energy costs like refining that bitumen into gasoline (another 18%), and transporting it across the continent to your gasoline pump, and it`s reasonable to assume it`s probably in the order of 2 to 2.5 gigajoules total. Also consider that these numbers are coming from the oil industry itself so I`ll leave it up to you to decide whether those numbers are going to be slight underestimates, or overestimates, or bang on ..... I know which way I lean towards that but I won`t let it influence my math too much, other than generally erring a bit on the high side when a range of numbers is provided. I suspect that these numbers aren`t a complete account of the total natural gas used up or wasted from start to finish.

How much energy does a barrel of gasoline contain? About 5 or 6 gigaloules. That is about half as much energy that was required of the natural gas to make it (the calculation I just did above). And the energy in the natural gas was not incorporated into the gasoline end product because both crude oil and gasoline have near the same energy density, actually gasoline is lower, so if anything energy was lost. That energy contained in the natural gas was lost to entropy to the universe. That is why Alberta wants to put in Nuke plants ...... to provide the energy necessary to turn dirt into gasoline........ and we are supposed to believe the tar sands are a ``source`` of energy?

So, we could drive half as far on the natural gas that is used to simply refine oil into gasoline. But since electric cars are about twice as efficient well to wheel as driving a natural gas powered car (the efficiency of converting natural gas to electricity to motion in your wheels is about 40%, while an ICE in your car with that same natural gas is about 20% efficient), it follows that we could go about the SAME DISTANCE IN AN ELECTRIC CAR AS A REGULAR GASOLINE POWERED CAR SIMPLY BY TAKING THE NATURAL GAS THAT WOULD OTHERWISE BE USED TO REFINE TAR SAND INTO GASOLINE AND INSTEAD TOTALLY BYPASSING THE OIL REFINING PROCESS AND MAKING ELECTRICITY WITH IT.

Now, my analysis is for the tar sands which is a huge energy hog. What kinds of numbers do we have for more conventional oil? I don`t know, maybe half as much, who knows, it probably varies a lot. But what we do know is that the EROEI of oil is continually dropping, so if anything my numbers are going to go even higher in the future. And I didn`t even factor in the energy needed to get the natural gas out of the ground and piped to the tar sands refinery in the first place! Although that would be the same for if we were buring it to make electricity.

I explain these calculations in more detail in my blog. It`s a year old so a bit dated, I need to update it, and back then I was more optimistic about the immediate future of the world. I now don`t believe this transition will happen before a significant number of people have a chance to get an EV.

I could give you a satisfyingly long reply to your post, but it would be counter to the central premise that I stand for over this issue.According to the USA Census Statistical Abstract of the United States, in 2006 there were two-hundtred and forty-four million (244,000,000) cars registered in the United States. Those cars travelled three billion fourteen million (3,014,000,0000 miles, and used up one-hundred and seventy-four billion nine hundred million (174,9,000,000) gallons of fuel!

Now, which country has holdings for the actual directly physical, or more obviously, the virtually entire future's market of rare metals that create the batteries and electric motors being mined out of the ground from foreign nations at this time? It isn't the United States you know. I'll leave you to Google and figure out which country it is.

Put it this way, anywhere you see the business end of a gun being used throughout the world at this time, figuring out why exactly the United States, the United Kingdom and half of Europe are supplying weaponry to these countries to fight a war on our behalf, against this country and its allies on their behalf, will help you figure out how important these rare earth metals are to the rest of the world and how up sh*t creak without a paddle in a barbed wire canoe western countries are on the world stage in the combat theatre's of the globe.

Now, how much energy will be needed to convert existing cars to a new method of propulsion. I can see those on minimum wage are going to be the first in the que. Then there is a little matter of financing this project, which I figure with the US in the hole for another three trillion dollars ($3,000,000,000,000), or three stacks of thousand dollar bills sixty-eight point nine (68.9) miles high, developmental money plus interest isn't going to be borrowed from that country with all the rare metal future's, but printed out of thin air by the FED to devalue the American dollar on the World market further and faster than ever!

These are exponential factor's ...

Coupled with a global population now almost fully addicted to oil that is three and a half times more than it was in 1930 from two to seven billion, and further add to this mix the US had a population of roughly 120 million in 1930, compared to 311 million today, and you just know that oil to agriculture times three and half times yield to an acre of crop land since the Green Revolution equals 7 billion people.

Do something for me please. Click the link below and watch the full documentary of Home, but ommit the happy ending regarding using solar and wind to push the planet to a new limit to growth with 9 billion people by 2050. I sense we'll be lucky to have 2 billion humans on this planet by 2050 without a growing supply of oil (liquid fuel) , including you and I ...

Internationally renowned photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand makes his feature directorial debut with this environmentally conscious documentary produced by Luc Besson, and narrated by Glenn Close. Shot in 54 countries and 120 locations over 217 days, Home presents the many wonders of planet Earth from an entirely aerial perspective. As such, we are afforded the unique opportunity to witness our changing environment from an entirely new vantage point. In our 200,000 years on Earth, humanity has hopelessly upset Mother Nature's delicate balance. Some experts claim that we have less than ten years to change our patterns of consumption and reverse the trend before the damage is irreversible. Produced to inspire action and encourage thoughtful debate, Home poses the prospect that unless we act quickly, we risk losing the only home we may ever have.

Vanityfox, I'll watch the Kunstler video later tonight, I'm at work now. Regarding the rare earths necessary to make the EV's, the new AC induction motors don't use rare earths.

There's lots of lithium in South America, China and Utah. I'll agree that it's going to be a challenge to get that much metal. But what's the alternative? Somehow finding enough fossil fuels to pull out of the ground? What's the difference? Fossil fuels or metals? The difference is that metals can be recycled and reused indefinitely while fossil fuels are gone forever when you burn them.

You question how much money it's going to take to finance a hundred million Chevy Volts. Yes, I agree with you, this will be prohibitive. But alternatively, how much will it take to finance another 40 years of US hegemony to take by force all the remaining fossil fuels in the world? When the dollar collapse, will the US even be ABLE to do this? So it's impossible, there simply isn't enough energy available to the US to continue its insane growth spiral based on fossil fuels. It will end soon, whether Washington wants it to or not. Therefore, we should be spending what little resources we have left on getting off fossil fuels, not pulling more out of the ground.

I don't really disagree with you, the future is going to be ugly. I think we should pull the bandaid off now wrt fossil fuels. Further subsidizing their price is only going to make things worse.

Vanityfox, I'll watch the Kunstler video later tonight, I'm at work now. Regarding the rare earths necessary to make the EV's, the new AC induction motors don't use rare earths.

There's lots of lithium in South America, China and Utah. I'll agree that it's going to be a challenge to get that much metal. But what's the alternative? Somehow finding enough fossil fuels to pull out of the ground? What's the difference? Fossil fuels or metals? The difference is that metals can be recycled and reused indefinitely while fossil fuels are gone forever when you burn them.

You question how much money it's going to take to finance a hundred million Chevy Volts. Yes, I agree with you, this will be prohibitive. But alternatively, how much will it take to finance another 40 years of US hegemony to take by force all the remaining fossil fuels in the world? When the dollar collapse, will the US even be ABLE to do this? So it's impossible, there simply isn't enough energy available to the US to continue its insane growth spiral based on fossil fuels. It will end soon, whether Washington wants it to or not. Therefore, we should be spending what little resources we have left on getting off fossil fuels, not pulling more out of the ground.

I don't really disagree with you, the future is going to be ugly. I think we should pull the bandaid off now wrt fossil fuels. Further subsidizing their price is only going to make things worse.

Hello Mark,

Most existing modern induction motors for the modern car industry and for wind turbine application are using Neodymium or Samarium–cobalt , commonly known widely as Rare-Earth Magnets. They've replaced Alnico and Ferrite magnets where extremely strong permanent magnetic application is needed. For example, the electric motors of each Toyota Prius requirie 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) of neodymium I can confirm. The Prius also usesterbium and dysprosium, added in smaller amounts to the alloy to preserve neodymium's magnetic properties at high temperatures. Yet another rare earth metal, lanthanum, is a major ingredient where 10 to 15 kilograms is used in hybrid batteries per Prius. The complex mining process for these substances are highly fossil fuel intensive. Set against Peak Oil you can really see the dynamic that removes a viable EROEI (Energy Return On Energy Invested).

I cannot fathom how even a sixteenth of the 244 million cars and (more importantly) food transportation trucks in the United States are going to be replaced over the next 25 years with even partial duel electric/fossil fuel propulsion methods, if three quarter's of the fossil fuel that runs the US economy are being imported from deminishing foreign oil fields at an established global decline rate of 6.7%, or a little over 10 years before the world is producing 50% of the sweet-crude output currently available today.

To the people that have appreciated my appraisal of Chris Martenson's Crash Course along this thread post for post, I can only hope you haven't lost hope with these clearly laid out facts that have proven to me over these past years of studying the fine print and detail that complex technology isn't going to save the day even with war fought, high fossil fuel input to create the transition splice. It is all so very late in the day when considering ...

... Time, Scale and Cost ...

In regard to the alternative prospects still on offer, I choose a self-sustaining walkable and local small town close-knit community, over a collosal complex multi-million populated city where all natural ecological diverse resource within them have all but completely disapeared, requiring vast input from elsewhere to maintain them.

Vanityfox, I never said that the Prius didn't use rare earths (and I know you never said I did....). But my quick google search confirms what I have already said, that the new AC induction motors do not use rare earths. The Tesla Roadster uses none in its motor.

And if we really do need them, let's just re-open the California mine.

We don't disagree that much in the end, I just went off on a rant when I heard Chris say that we don't yet have vehicles capable of running without fossil fuels, because we do, and I have one (hopefully installing the batteries this weekend).

I agree that we should be walking and biking more. What I strongly disagree with is the situation we are in where current car manufacturers are dedicating their manufacturing capacity to cranking out gasoline powered cars and every political commentater and his dog is ready to scream bloody murder the instant someone suggests that carmakers should be forced to produce x% electric cars per year or that EV's should have extensive subsidies or tax advantages to help level the mass-production field of competition with ICE's that have already had 100 years to develop, in the name of some free market competition evangelism, when at the same time every other market is subsidized to high heaven, including fossil fuels, which is one of the worst offenders. The hypocricy is staggering. And that we should be extracting as much fossil fuels out of the ground as we can in order to extend the ponzi scheme for as long as we can, when a crash is inevitable anyways.

And the other thing, all those food delivery trucks you mention that can't be converted over to electric fast enough, they could easily be converted over to run on natural gas which is the next best thing... since you know what I have to say about natural gas...

Greg, thanks for the link to the great review of Chris's CC Book! John Rubino (Dollar Collapse) does a nice job. I really like how he opens the review, setting what I think is a critical context for people who are just being introduced to Chris's work:

The first thing to understand about Chris Martenson, the respected financial consultant and commentator, is that he's a PhD in pathology who is, as a result, very comfortable with complex, technical ideas. He's also a clear, concise writer. In Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future Of Our Economy, Energy, And Environment he'll toss off sentences like "Money is a tertiary abstraction that gets its meaning from real forms of wealth," and by the time a reader sees this, the meaning is both clear and profound because Martenson has done such a good job of laying out the necessary building blocks.

Every word that you've written is in the most part the truth, and I thank you for that. Why, then, are such genius relegated to a minority in the public imagination? Why does the American public still pay for a government that has expanded its girth by a factor of three in thirty years, along with a military infrastructure to a size beyond the scope of my imagining? Why aren't these leader's given the freedom to help the American public power-down and move away from fossil fuel, and embrace the future with a transition toward alternative and sustainable energy resource?

Where did the ethanol twin tank tap disappear to on the Ford Model T production line in answer to prohibition, where a car could once travel across prairie land filling up from a farmers distilliary, only to be criminalized to the point where many hundreds of Texaco petrol Station's dotted the highways as a legalized form of taxation?

Why were the electrified trams of Chicago and New York bought up by Standard Oil and dismantled, only to be replaced by petrolium powered GM buses, with numatic tyres that require 6 gallons of oil to make just one?

What was the necessity to kill diversity and to create dead centre syndrome where cities were once walkable, building many millions of vast suburbs on green-belt farmland, with long gas pipes and long electrical cables to power them, with highways for automobiles and lack of subsidised public transport - now a train system fitting for Bulgaria in what was the "Greatest Country In The World!!!"???

What then of the near 15 million barrels of imported oil to maintain the illusion of diversity every day now, with 14,000 crumbling bridges, highways filling with pot-holes, and a national debt off out of the stratosphere?

Here we play Mark, writing on the pages of one of the very best forums I've ever had the pleasure to both read and write in, yet just 6806 topics have been written within it, of its 4+ years, of which at this time of writing, 80712 posts have been written by just 45,747 registered users. If 10 times as many of that 45,747 registered users were readers here every day, that is still under half a million people paying attention to what we have written to each other, a quarter of which are from other countries around the world.

Every day I hope that what is written in this forum makes a difference to someone somewhere who has the power to change the course of where we are heading. Yet every day so far, with all the brightly brilliant answer's to our plight, the world just keeps on revolving at an ever increasing and destructive pace ...

We don't disagree that much in the end, I just went off on a rant when I heard Chris say that we don't yet have vehicles capable of running without fossil fuels, because we do, and I have one (hopefully installing the batteries this weekend).

So, tell me Mark......... HOW do you charge those batteries?

I might add, I do loads of sustainable stuff too. BUT, you and I may be able to do this, but how will the other millions around us do it too? It's simply not possible, which is why I got in first!